Sunday, June 24, 2012

It's About Character

Thought for the day:

“The difference between the right and
the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning
bug.”

~ Mark Twain

A gift for my writer
friends. Writers’ Digest sends me e-newsletters all the time with links to
articles. Some are good and some are not worth much time. I think the following
two links are very good. Enjoy!

The WINNER of the copy of Seeing Cinderella from my last posting is Carolyn Pile. I will be
getting this to you right away, Carolyn. Congratulations!

I’d like to talk about character today. This is prompted by a couple of
middle-grade books I reviewed recently for the Sacramento Book Review. As Donald Maass says in his instructive
book, Writing the Breakout Novel,
“Most of us do not for very long tolerate people who make us feel frustrated,
sad, hopeless or depressed ― not in life, not in books.” Well, that is exactly
what I experienced in these two books – the most obnoxious, unlikable main
characters I have encountered in a long time, characters who made me feel
frustrated most of the time I was reading the books. Honestly, if I hadn’t
agreed to review the books, I’m not sure I would have finished them. The
stories were not compelling enough to overcome the unpleasantness of the main
characters.

I remember hearing at a workshop that writers need to create characters
readers will want to cheer for. The main characters in both books were bratty,
selfish, and downright mean-spirited nearly the whole way through. I found
myself not only cheering for the other side, if you will, but saying out loud
more than once, “Are you kidding me?” I wanted someone to come in from the
sidelines and straighten those girls out.

Both these books came from large, reputable publishers. This is the kind of
mistake I’m not too surprised to see in a self-published book by an anxious new
author or from an extremely inexperienced writer, but I can’t imagine how this
got past an editor at a big house. For one of the authors, it is her debut
novel, but for the other, it is her seventh published book! I won’t be spending
any of my time on her other books.

So what is it we can do as writers to build characters who make readers want
to get their pom-poms out and jump out and down. According to Donald Maass, “It
just requires identifying what is extraordinary in people who are otherwise
ordinary.” This, of course, is not nearly as easy as it sounds. Unless we are
writing fantasy or science fiction, we want our characters to be believable,
which means they need to be fairly ordinary and very human. But I also believe
most people have extraordinariness within them, and that is what we need to
mine to build characters for whom our readers will want to cheer. I wish I had
a good answer to offer here about how to do that, but I don’t. I can only tell
you what I do. I try to look for the vulnerability in my character. That will
lead me to what gives the character the best chance to become extraordinary by
overcoming something that is frightening and difficult for him or her. And that’s
where I think the writers of the middle-grade books I read last week missed the
mark. They didn’t have characters who overcame anything difficult. Heck, they
couldn’t even overcome their own brattiness and selfishness. They never would
have even tried. The characters were just plain ordinary. So, writer friends,
take a close look at your main characters and make sure the voices you hear in your head are cheering!

I’m not giving away a book this week. I didn’t read anything
I want to pass along. Isn’t that sad? You will fare better next week. I have a
very funny book to review and pass along. But please leave a comment. I’d love
to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the
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About Me

Thanks for dropping by. I am a writer who works almost entirely on children's books, stories, poems, and articles, including two completed novels. I live in Antelope, CA, near Sacramento-- crazy hot in the summer, cold and wet in the winter, and stunning in the spring and fall. I spent many years teaching high school English and am in love with words, books, theatre, and related subjects. I regularly review children's and young adult books for the San Francisco and Manhattan Book Reviews. I would love to hear from you and what interests you. I have had work published in Highlights and High Five Magazines as well as a rhyming story in the anthology, Fifty Funny Poems for Children published in the U.K., and a memoir included in a Christmas anthology from Harlequin, A Miracle Under the Christmas Tree. Please leave a comment or question or poem.